The Root of Everything
by lurv2boogie
Summary: Willow always knew there'd be consequences. She just hadn't imagined it would be like this. The magic was everywhere and now... it was gone. [Soliloquy style. Willow's POV, talking to Xander].


**A/N: Hi guys. First, I must apologise, _gentle viewers _(ha!), for the fact that this oneshot is complete and utter drivel. Very sorry. I just felt the need to post something, anything... so this is what happened. Still worth a read, but definitely not some of my best work. Please review, tell me if you agree or think it's good enough to keep up here. I'll keep it up for a couple of weeks, and if I get a majority of positive reviews I'll keep it up here. If not, it's going in the bin, where it's probably much better suited. **

**Dedicated to _scowlingpixie_, if she's reading this, because I was thinking of you while I wrote it. My way of extending the olive branch. Or possibly a dove. One of those. **

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"I'm sorry. Came out a little blunter than I intended."

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_Thursday 22nd, 8:47pm and 30 seconds_

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I often marvel at the way that a moment can change everything. We measure the length of our lives by the number of years we've lived, but it seems to make more sense to me to measure our lives by the moments, that make up the days, that make up the years we've lived.

It all happened, it all _changed_, in just a moment.

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There are two words in the English language that are unlike any others. That, individually, don't mean much at all, but when put side by side they have the same effect as a lead weight, and inevitably the weight will fall hard and heavily into silent abyss. When I speak them, the silence that surrounds me deepens, sickeningly, and somehow unbearably loudly. The words tumble out of my mouth carelessly, as though they are not representative of anything of real importance. I might as well have been telling you the weather forecast. But I wasn't.

Well, I wasn't.

It doesn't make much sense, I suppose, to someone who hasn't heard those words, or spoken them, and I realise I'm not particularly articulate, but I don't really want to be. Being articulate means explaining myself clearly, _comprehensively_, and I'm not entirely sure that I'm prepared for that moment of clarity, of elucidation, and watch the shroud of confusion clear from your face only to reveal a terrible look of… well, pain.

Believe me, I'm thoroughly aware of the irony. To be lamenting your pain when I've caused so much myself. It's what happens when you become a part of something that's so much bigger than you, that you can't control. It's what happens to drug addicts and murderers and… God, even kleptomaniacs. You get caught up in it. And there are no words to properly explain how caught up I am in everything. Completely tangled.

I've always been the logical one. The coherent one. I've always had to be. Words, language, the carefully constructed art of sentences, have always been the only way to communicate for me. How horrible, now, that those words are failing me, that they get stuck in my throat, in a way that they never have before. Completely isolated from everything, I have never felt as lonely as I do now, standing before you. Standing before the one person that I would never have thought to even contemplate feeling secluded from.

We always knew there would be consequences. Well, Giles did, at the least. And Tara. She knew. She knew this would happen. I know she did. She pushed so hard for me to stop, to think about what I was doing to myself. To everything. Upsetting the balance. I took a life, and the karmic balance has to even out. Again, it's ironic. Should I be panicking more? Or… I don't know, praying? Something. I wonder what Tara would do. She'd know what to do. The sickly realisation has already filled me along with the recognition that she won't ever welcome me with open arms when it's my time to greet her again. She wouldn't want that. But God, I'm just so lost without her. I'd be so lost without you.

I could almost laugh bitterly, and I am thoroughly aware that I am a terrible person. While _you,_ my oldest friend, my family, are falling into outrageous hysteria, I stand watching, settling into my silent madness. I contemplate briefly as to whether I deserved this. I think I did. I think, to a certain extent at least, that it was God's way of getting his own back. Was it God who decided this fate for me? Maybe I'm being punished for all those Charlie Brown Christmas Specials we watched together.

_We did not weave the web of life. We are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves_. I remember the quote from a paper some time ago, probably something that you had shown me – the sheet had been thrust into my face so quickly that I had only noticed the one line. Have I done this to myself? I was at the heart of disruption and deception and destruction, so now destruction is being interlaced into my life in the same fashion as the way I interlaced it into the lives of others. I find myself misquoting, for want of a better word, to add a certain amount of dramatic irony I suppose, and it brings me out of my reminiscent reverie.

_We did not weave the web of life. We are merely stranded in it. _

I have been stranded in my web of life, the one that has been weaved for me, the same one that has dealt me my cards that lie on the table before me. If I were a fortune teller, I would tell you that Death on the cards means change, but since I am not, all I can honestly tell you is that Death on the cards means _Death_ (because it thoroughly deserves its own capital 'D').

I'm so stuck, so confined within the shell of everything that's me. Slowly, as inevitably as the silence that crushed us, a crack appears in the barrier, and salt tears falls heavily onto the floor and the ivory of your skin with a disturbing air of finality. So heavily that the hands of God could not stop them, could not dry them, could not shake them until they are shocked into submission. This awful rain that falls onto my skin as fingers claw the hem of my clothes, that burns their terrible anguish into my heart, is all the more terrible because I know I am the cause of it. I didn't want to be. God knows, I didn't need to be. And yet, I am.

Your cheeks turn pallid, your eyes shut tightly, and your mouth is spread into what is technically the shape of a smile but is completely devoid of mirth. And, I suppose, if that were the simple extent of the effect I have had on you, the reaction wouldn't be such a weight to bear. But nothing in my imagination, in human imagination, could prepare me for the simple, purest mixture of terror, shock and awful sadness that I see now on your face.

There are two words in the English language that, no matter how often I say them to myself, it cannot match the reaction I get when I say them to you.

"I'm dying."

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Thursday 22nd, 8:47pm and 32 seconds

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Look.

All the magic's gone.

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This is magic. The root of everything.

The root of life, the root of _death_. Everything.

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**A/N: And the verdict is...? Please review. **


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